Rogério Timóteo

With each breath we take, the dust penetrates deep into every pore of the body. This light, dry dust floats in the air, enveloping man until he becomes indistinguishable from the raw material he has exploited for centuries.

Men drag shapeless blocks from the depths of the earth, they carry tons of stone up the steep sides of the quarry. The block is rough-hewn, cleaning it of its impurities, its surface is smoothed and, depending on its quality, it is stacked high in immense building yards to wait its turn to serve Society. Only the tiniest part of all this marble will be of a quality pure enough to awaken a creative urge.

It was into this environment that I was born, for the life which, together with my family’s connection with the exploitation and transformation of marble, was to determine my future.

During my childhood and adolescence, I absorbed its hardness, its strength and its nobility, and I came to understand the characteristics of its geological formation. I visualized the various steps in the process of turning a hard, heavy, shapeless block into a work of art. I learned the secrets of marble with the best teachers; I learned the details of technique, and above all I learned humility before such a noble material.

Throughout these years, I have worked day by day, dedicating myself body and soul to sculpture that could in some way express my fears, my joy, my longings, all that I am as a human being. These have been hours, days, months, years of hard workshop labour in solitary dialogue with this material.

- Rogério Timóteo